Endings...

Passage: Revelation 20

When our first daughter was about two, she developed a routine every time we were out running errands in the car.  We’d get to the point at which we’d completed all our business.  And we’d turn in the direction of home.  Although very young, our daughter would perceive our change of direction.  She’d ask, “Where are we going?”  We’d reply, “Home.”  And she would immediately say, “I don’t want to go home.”  She didn’t want our trip to end. 

The Book of Revelation traces the trajectory of human history.  In references to Creation and the Serpent, John brings us back to the beginning of our story.  Throughout the book John chronicles Creation’s struggle with the effects of human sin, as well as the history-long battle between God’s enemy, Satan, and God’s people.  And at the close of Revelation John brings the story arch to its conclusion.  Humanity’s traverse of this world is finite.  It will end.

John describes forces that don’t want the journey to end.  These forces include Satan, whose power is limited to this world, as well as those human individuals and systems that have derived their power from evil sources.  Revelation is full of violent and unsettling episodes – plagues; famines; earthquakes; wars.  John rightly identifies these as the demolition component of God’s master renovation plan.  In order for God’s new thing to come, the old has to go.  Completely.  The only way to pass securely, courageously, and peacefully into God’s new Creation is to trust God completely.  And our world is full of forces who will never trust God.  Who will insist on their way rather than his. 

In Revelation 16 John gives the account of God’s wrath being poured out on the earth in the form of seven bowls.  Three times in the chapter John states the response of the remnant of humanity – those who have resisted God’s anointed, Jesus Christ, and his way.  John says they, “cursed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, but they refused to repent of what they had done.”  In Revelation 20, John witnesses the natural end result of that posture toward God.  He says:

The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what they had done. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death.  Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire. (Rev. 20:13-15)

We don’t like the idea that the end of history means a decisive end to certain people.  There is intuitive appeal to the Universalist idea that all people will be given new life in God’s new Creation.  What the Bible consistently maintains is that there are certain people who, no matter how many chances they’re given, will not repent.  That is, turn from their way and accept God’s way.  And ultimately, God insists on having his way.  It’s his prerogative.  He’s God. 

CS Lewis deals with the dilemma of unrepentance in The Problem of Pain.  He argues,

“In the long run the answer to all those who object to the doctrine of hell is itself a question: “What are you asking God to do?” To wipe out their past sins and, at all costs, to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty and offering every miraculous help? But He has done so, on Calvary. To forgive them? They will not be forgiven. To leave them alone? Alas, I am afraid that is what He does.”

In the end God gives people what they want.  If they want life without him, they’ll get it. 

Our natural reaction to the end of this world is resistance.  We automatically think of everything we stand to lose.  And when we try to picture the future God has in store for us, we can’t.  We’re faced with the prospect of trading everything familiar and cherished for an unknown commodity.  But everything we know and love in this life is a refuge – a refuge from a world that is not the way we know it should be.  The unknown thing that God is bringing is, in fact, Creation the way it was meant to be.  As the end approaches, God poses us with this question: How much do you trust me?  Is it enough to go my way, even though you can’t see where we’re going?  Do you trust me to conclude this part of your story in a way that is ultimately good?  If you’ve never trusted God, you will never tolerate the end that God brings.  If you trust God, then when the inevitable end approaches, you will welcome it.